Aphra Behn is thankful she’s not a Doctor, But she’s seen the effect of MTAS up close and personal. Here are her thoughts on it. I’ve quoted some here, but do read the whole thing. It’s worth it.

 Young British doctors are being crushed by the Machine. I am an outsider to this situation and have not mastered the details, but it has been decided that it is too messy for doctors to apply in a disorderly ad hoc way for training jobs at the appropriate level in a hospital which is local to where they live. Oh no. You see we have too many young doctors and need to cull them. And the culling must be done fairly. So 20,000 of them are being fed into a giant grain hopper which is spitting the lucky ones out into hospitals around the country. The unlucky ones won’t get jobs.

The junior doctors had to fill out a form with ten or twelve questions, 150 words to each answer, to summarise their skills, attitudes, ambitions and experiences. This is efficient, it’s auditable, and if everyone plays the game to the same standard it is even fair. But it is also demeaning, dehumanising and soul-destroying.